The Yiddish Book Center's

Wexler Oral History Project

A growing collection of in-depth interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds, whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.

"Fifteen years of recorded programs of Jewish interest": the Montreal Jewish Public Library's collection of recordings

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Ron Finegold - former employee of the Montreal Jewish Public Library - explains the project of the Montreal Jewish Public Library (where he worked for years) to record public programs of Jewish interest and make them available to their patrons. The Yiddish Book Center has since digitized this material and made it publicly accessible as part of the Frances Brandt collection.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Ron Finegold.

This excerpt is in English.

Ron Finegold was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1938.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

"Let's do our own little cottage industry of taping all the Yiddish classics": recording Yiddish talking books at the Montreal JPL

2 min 41 sec

Describing the Canadian-Jewish Writer A.M. Klein

3 min 37 sec

My Family Wasn't in the Eishyshok Book

2 min 27 sec

A.M. Klein and other Jewish figures as "khappers" (promoters) at Bronfman's Seagram Plant During U.S. Prohibition Years

2 min 44 sec

Memorable Events He Recorded While Working at the Montreal Jewish Public Library

3 min 6 sec

The Petlura Pogrom in Proskurov: My Mother's Story

3 min 21 sec

Genealogy and the Importance of Being in the Present

1 min 55 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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